NASA's $11 Billion Mars Dilemma | This Week In Spaceflight 

Congrats on your one-year anniversary of "This Week In Spaceflight" Elysia, Hope to see years more of TWISF, Thank you Elysia & NSF!!!

Congrats on 1 year of TWIS. It continues to be a great addition to the other NSF videos and live streams. Always look forward to Friday and getting information about all space related projects. Thank you Elysia and team NASASpaceflight.

Congratulations TWIS 🎉

The best space update of the week. Happy anniversary Elysia

Congratulations on your one year anniversary! I enjoy the news and updates. Great job everyone!!!

Congratulations on your first year 🎉 Thanks for all your Space content .😊

Congratulations Elysia and NSF team, thanks for all the great information.

Congratulations team on both anniversaries😊 Well done and continued success

Happy Anniversary NSF, Thanks for making my day today

Congrats Elysia and Team and thanks for the update.

Congratulations and happy 1st birthday to Elysia and NSF.

Happy anniversary

Congrats Elysia. I looked every episode. Well done!

Way to Go NSF Team🤓! Happy Anniversary

Happy 1 year anniversary! #ElysiaFanClub

Hello Another good show. Happy Anniversary NSF

This young lady is very good at her job. Thanks for the content and her amazing presentation.

Happy birthday Elysia, Alex and everyone on the fantastic TWiS team 🎉

Congrats on the anniversary! This is the most news like and reliable show on the subject. Thanks for giving a broad, unbiased report on the weeks events!

Congratulations, and happy anniversary!

Make a competition for the Mars Sample Return: 1st private company to bring samples (eg 10) gets 5 billion, 2nd gets 2.5 billion, 3rd gets 1 billion. It would cost less and samples would be on Earth by at the very worst 2035

You make me smile every time. Thank you.

Happy birthday, NSF TWISF!

Happy anniversary 🎉🎉

Happy Birthday Elysia (and Team) . Love the weekly updates

Congratulations on your anniversary!!

Congrats on the anniversary! And one million subs as well! Keep em coming!

Happy Birthday! Love the Friday updates!!!

If SpaceX can get the performance to get Starship from LEO to Mars and back to LEO, then that’s the option I’d be betting on. Paired with the FLEX rover which is pretty much built for this sort of mission.

Love the weekly report, Elysia does an amazing job!

congrats this week in space great show

Congratulations on your 1-year anniversary! Keep up the amazing work! 😎🚀🌓👏🎉

Congratulations on 1 year anniversary of "This Week in Spaceflight Elysia and the whole team 🚀 👏 👍🍻

Congrats and thank you 🎉

I wonder why a simple standoff would be made of inconel. It is an extremely high temperature alloy and would seem a bad choice of material for something designed to burn up on re-entry. I would suggest it's a typical case over budget NASA spending that could have resulted in a bad outcome.

And the crowd roars: ELL-LEE-SEE-YUHHH!!!!!!

Congratulations on the 1-year milestone for This Week In Spaceflight.🎉

I really enjoy these weekly recaps!

Congratulations for the anniversary, I really like your show. Very concise and we'll explained🎉🎉🎉

Excellent reporting! Thank you.

Thank you, a great synopsis as always.

Congrats!!!! 🙂

Happy aniversary🎉🎉 continue making videos when we go to mars and beyond ❤❤

One year!!!!!!!!!!

Congrats on TWISF!

Congratulations twis anniversary

Thank for 1 year of great information 🎉🎉🎉

Happy First NSF!

congrat on one year!

Happy birthday! Love the Space Shuttle-lighter from the rocket nozzles!

Congratulations on 1 yr TWIS.

Let’s go! What a milestone, congrats B1062!

Congats on your anniversary. What kind of ear hanger did you wear? They are gourgous, but i would expected something more anniversary like? That is why i watch. 😊

The info graphics for the SuperView launch (at 16:39) lists “Falcon 9“ as the launch vehicle.

1:50 Inconel is an odd choice for an alloy when everything discarded is supposed to melt into droplets or even dust. Inconel melts at 1330-1430°C and -is- has been used for the combustion chamber and nozzel of rockets.

Elysia, you’re going to be a tough act to follow. Thank you for providing such useful content presented in a most digestible fashion.

Excellent presentation. It appears space engineering and technology is a great career option.

Yes, they have the potential ... "When you push something to its potential, it will break." -- Anon.

I really can't comprehend why Boeing is still receiving public money.

you'd think they could send 30 ingenuity mars' helicopters with claws, a couple of communication base stations , all using 3 or 4 skycranes to land on mars via a falcon heavy for less than a billion. Then fly helicopters to retrieve samples with massive systems redundancy and all systems basically pretested.

Epic! 😎

Nice Shuttle candle! 🕯️

Thanks for another great episode. Upgrades, and Licensing should've been added about SS. I don't understand how they issue a launch license for a year, then make an issue every time SS wants to take flight when NASA is depending on this so much. Again, thank for a great episode! - NOM

Has it really been a year of "this week in spaceflight" .... time really does fly wen yer having fun !!!

20 flights?!?! lets gooo!!! Ultra sonic scans have said those boosters can last as much as possibly 60 flights which is amazing but imagine if that was in the hundreds?! I cant wait for that! ALSO CONGRATULATIONS ON TWISF!

1:33 I noticed you said 2021 instead of 2024, Happy anniversary!

4:00 those booster's legs look pretty similar too...

I enjoy watching this ISS from my backyard. Is there any? Way I can watch it Heather space station from my back yard. Is there an app

Mar sample return maybe in 2040? scrub this program and apply that the $ toward human landings. Oh, and btw congrats on one year anniversary-Elysia first female on the Moon/Mars :)

What about RocketLab for the MSR mission?, Photon has got some potential as a small, cheap and reliable spacecraft.

SpaceX Mars Sample return proposal: "We can land and have a astronaut pick them up for you?"

05:13 If it flies to 10 000 m, it does not have fins for re-entry. It won't re-enter the atmoshpere, since it will not leave it at all.

Yay, new video

Congratulations...

Ohssshhh, the minute u said Starliner I almost choked😂

I'm just surprised it came from the ISS rather than all the plethora of other debris that's up there. Also how do we know it's the only piece that reentered?

Government agencies usually delay announcing changes to missions like Mars Sample Return due to an unwillingness to admit that the original architecture was unachievable. To be fair, Mars Sample Return is a formidable challenge with current capabilities.

well done on the 1m subs

Superbb

Inconel X is extremely heat resistant and I am not surprised a chunk came back!

Although many analysts are skeptical that HLS will be fully ready by Sept 2026 to carry human passengers to the Moon's surface, we can be certain that SpaceX will do everything that is humanly possible to be ready. Based upon the manufacturing capacity which SpaceX is deploying by Sept 2026 SpaceX will have flown between 50 and 100 Starships. Remember that Starship is absolutely critical to the deployment of Starlink V2. They never intended to fly Starlink V2 on Falcon 9 because of the mass limitations. The full Starlink V2s have four times the power. And once Starship is operational it actually costs less per launch than Falcon 9. Further all of the pre-requisite testing will be complete, or almost complete. SpaceX will have landed an automated HLS on the Moon, and recovered it. SpaceX will have the refilling station operational because it cannot even fly that test without it. So here you are in October 2024 with dozens of Starship stacks in operation and a working refilling station in orbit. You are Elon Musk, and what are you going to do? Why wouldn't you expend one of your Starships by sending it on a one-way journey to Mars? After all with a far less tested launcher in 2019 he sent his Tesla Roadster to the Asteroid Belt. Even Musk admitted that there was a less than 50/50 chance that the Falcon Heavy would work. A fully fueled Starship V3 can deliver more than 100 tonnes to low Mars Orbit (LMO). If I were a University Engineering department I would be right now asking my colleagues in Astronomy what they would like to send to Mars, considering that the price is going to be close to zero, because of the risks. What would you do if you could get a literal tonne of equipment deployed in LMO? And if mass is not an issue, surely some competent team of aero-space engineers could figure out a way to recover the samples left behind on the surface. What if it doesn't have to fly all the way back to Earth, just back up to LMO to meet with the Starship in orbit. If it uses methalox propulsion, it can just siphon fuel out of the excess left on the Starship, and with that head start make it back to Earth. Since it is probably premature to think of flying the Starship back to Earth, although somebody is certainly doing the calculations, perhaps the most productive use, once it has deployed all of the cargo destined to LMO, is to attempt to land on Mars. The odds of success are low, but what else are you going to do, since you can;t bring it back to Earth. And failure teaches lessons that the follow up missions will appreciate. If the landing actually succeeds and the robots can find ice it could fire up the Sabatier Reactor and start filling its empty tanks with methane and oxygen. It can't hurt. And if you are extraordinarily lucky after two years on the surface the multi-ship 2028 expedition will arrive, and you can help them refuel!

If it's truly delayed out to 2040 astronauts will hopefully be just picking them up off the ground themselves

Wonder if the homeowners policy covers space debris.

Seriously, I hope NASA is briefing in ISRO on the whole Mars Sample Return conundrum... NASA itself has recently commented that ISRO is capable of conducting very complex missions, on time, and on very slim budgets.... they might be the perfect folks to bring in to help "rescue" the MSR mission.

Yea! its that time again ;)

Just thought I'd say Hi 😊

Nice

TBF Mars missions favour an old school development approach because most modern approaches rely on being able to rapidly iterate and learn as you go. How do you do that when you can only try it out once every 18 months and each attempt takes about 9 months. Where would SpaceX be if they could only launch a rocket every 18 months?

Sample return in 2040? Why bother, will already have on-site habitable science station to do work there from Starship...

I think they always knew they were just testing drill bits. We def need more mining robots on Mars, there's a lot of work to be done.

Send people there. Mars Direct style. Instead of bringing back a few dozen grams, we bring back hundreds of kilograms. Priceless science will be done there. Marsonauts will be able to travel hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers away from base. 4 people, 3 Starship launches at most. That's the closest you can get to finding out whether there was ever life there. Will inspire generations of future scientists and engineers.

If SpaceX wasn't there I'm sure humanity wouldn't be going to Mars anytime in 21st Century. Thanks to those people who says we should first solve crises on earth only then space.

Elon is right it can be do in 5 years or less if the Government stops delaying the development of StarShip. StarShip can have it first test landing mission on Mars by the end of 2027 or start 2028, In space Refueling StarShip from Tanker by the end on 2025 or start 2026. if the government, NASA and the US Military push StarShip on fast track like Apollo. As soon as Space X completes reentry and land of StarShip thing will move fast.

Would be absolutely stupid to cancel mars sample return. It wouls negate the purpose of an entire existing rover mission and years of work

16:21 report appears to have China launching a Falcon 9 (see 16:40 details). Apart from that, once more, an excellent update from NSF.

Ever heard of the Deficit ?

Inscrito Brasil 🇧🇷

I really hope the brave souls gambling to fly starliner make it back.

LI on the ISS; what the risk assessment for this? After all, smart phones, laptops and electric cars tend to explode in flames quite happily.

you are the one i would love to wake up with your so powerful und smart.